


The Snow Globe (Behind the door : day 1)

by DoctorBilly



Series: Behind the door: Advent calendar2014 [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 17:23:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2701106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorBilly/pseuds/DoctorBilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Day 1 of my Advent Calendar for 2014. Prompts are from locations behind the <a href="http://www.safestyle-windows.co.uk/secret-door/index.html">Secret Door</a></p><p>This is a little Billyverse tale set six months after Billy is sent to prison in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2625389/chapters/5856320">"Liminal" </a></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Snow Globe (Behind the door : day 1)

**Author's Note:**

> If the picture that goes with this fic isn't showing up on your device, it can be seen [here](http://doctor-billy.tumblr.com/post/104071148608/advent-calendar-2014-day-1-prompt-location-is)

 

"C'est jolie, dada."

Greg Lestrade smiles indulgently as his four year old daughter tries to turn the snow globe upside down again. It is glass, large and heavy, handmade.

"Let me help you, sweetheart."

Hero laughs as Lestrade puts his own sensitive hands over her own small pudgy ones. Together, they shake the snow globe and watch the sparkly flakes drift down over the almost-empty snowscape inside.

"Oncle Sherlock dit _le pôle est un fruit de l'imagination d'un idiot_."

Hero sounds so like Sherlock as she pronounces this that Lestrade laughs out loud.

"But there it is, look."

As the "snow" settles, a pole appears in the centre of the snowy landscape. Striped, like a barber's pole, with a shining ball on top.

Lestrade chuckles. It is so obviously ridiculous, and yet every visitor to the McMurdo base wants to have their picture taken next to it. He scrabbles through the box of Billy Wiggins's souvenirs that have been brought to the flat for safe-keeping, and pulls out a crumpled photograph.

"Here. Look, lovely. Who are these people?"

Hero looks carefully.

"Soldiers. And you, dada. With a silly hat."

Lestrade grins.

"Yep. That is a silly hat. Who's that next to me? The one touching the pole and laughing?"

Hero looks again, and smiles.

"C'est papa. C'est papa, dada."

"Yeah. Me and your papa went to the South Pole. Your papa had to meet a famous scientist. I just went for the fun. But you see, there is a pole."

"C'est vrai."

Hero nods her head solemnly. Her brow wrinkles.

"Dada, will papa come home soon?"

"I don't know, sweetheart. But he will write to you again soon, and I'll take you to visit him before Christmas."

"He is lonely."

"Yes. He misses you. And Arkasha."

"Can we send him a photo of us?"

"Yes, of course. We'll take one of you and Arkasha in the snow."

"Yes, yes! Dya-dya must wear his furry coat. And I will wear my red one. What will you wear, dada?"

"I'll be taking the photo, sweetheart. I won't need to dress up."

Lestrade smiles, a little sadly. He is sure Billy wouldn't want _him_ in the picture of his loved ones.

He smoothes out the photograph and snaps a copy of it with his phone's scanner app. He puts the original carefully back in Billy's box.

He places the snow globe on the windowsill, where it will catch the light. He remembers Billy making it; recycling an old, dried up ornament he'd found in the market, making a new scene for inside, filling it and sealing it so it wouldn't leak. It had taken days.

He had thought it lost, or broken, and was surprised when it turned up in a box of junk hidden away in the back of a self-storage lockup that Billy had rented when he'd moved to France, soon after Hero's birth.

Lestrade and Arkady, Billy's partner, had gone to the lockup in hopes of finding something that would act as a reminder of her papa for Hero, and they had struck gold. The box had all sorts of bits and pieces in it.

The snow globe was the first treasure they had brought out of it. Others would be revealed to the four-year-old in the coming weeks and months.

She would not forget her papa. Not if Lestrade had anything to do with it.


End file.
